Hotel Chocolat has widened its offer with a new “dessert-inspired” Raspberry Cheesecake drinking chocolate.
The new sippable line, designed for the retailer’s Velvetiser drinking chocolate machine, blends white chocolate with raspberry, yoghurt and mascarpone to “to deliver an authentic cheesecake flavour”.
It had been designed to tap into a trend of consumers increasingly choosing chocolate over dessert, yet “still wanting multi-layered flavours”, Hotel Chocolat said.
Priced at £14.95 for a 10-sachet box, the currently limited-edition multipack launched online and in Hotel Chocolat stores on 7 April, for VIP.ME loyalty scheme members. It will be available to all customers from 13 April.
“I’ve always noticed that cheesecake flavours overperform because they balance indulgence with a bit of sharpness,” said Yiotis Panagiotou, Hotel Chocolat specialty cocoa chocolatier.
“That got me wondering what would happen if we turned that into a Velvetiser moment. The goal wasn’t to mimic a cheesecake exactly, but to capture that familiar ‘creamy-with-a-kick’ feeling in a way that makes sense as a warm, comforting drink.
“It’s basically the after‑dinner pudding people want, just in a cup instead of on a plate,” Panagiotou said.
It’s the latest expansion to the Velvetiser lineup following the launch of five flavours exclusively into Tesco in October, marking Hotel Chocolat’s return to the grocery shelves for the first time since 2021.
Although launched as an experiment in 2018, the Velvetiser hot chocolate machine has become a major strand of the now Mars-owned retailer’s income, and is seen as a major source of growth globally.
There are currently more than 1.5 million Velvetiser owners in the UK, and hot chocolate also forms a key part of Hotel Chocolat’s Velvetiser café offer in the UK and the US.
Such is the demand the retailer recently installed a second multi-million pound flaking manufacturing line at its Huntington factory dedicated to making the product.
Last month, Hotel Chocolat unvieled its biggest brand refresh for 21 years, designed to make its luxury products more accessible to shoppers and tackle cocoa inflation.
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